DC Super Hero Girls – Bumblebee at Super Hero High

Lisa Yee's Bumblebee at Super Hero High is a superhero school story for 9 year olds about a girl who made her own superpowers, then loses the lab she made them in.

What happens

Karen Andrena-Beecher built her first pair of bee wings when she was five (her mum's main worry was the ceiling fan). Now she's Bumblebee. Her homemade suit lets her fly, fire sonic blasts and shrink to the size of a bee.

This is the sixth Super Hero High book, and this time Bumblebee gets the spotlight.

Then one day her mum phones with bad news. A tree has come down on the family home and set it on fire. Her parents are safe (Dad's arm is broken). But the house is gone, and so is the Bee Tree Lab, the tree house where she invented everything.

Her backup suit is lost in the rubble and the battery in the one she's wearing keeps running down. So Bumblebee starts to wonder who she is without it. Is she a real super hero, or just little Karen pretending?

She takes that worry to the school counsellor, Dr Arkham. He's very kind and a bit hopeless at the same time (his best advice came off a coffee mug).

And then there's Beast Boy. Bumblebee gets paired with him for a class project on natural disasters and he's SO annoying. He turns into a skunk, chants her words back at her and takes a bow for ideas that were all hers. Who hasn't been stuck with a partner like that?

Something odd is happening to the bees too. The ones Bumblebee finds in town are dozy and silent, and a few drop out of the air mid-flight. Nobody knows why yet.

If you've got a reader who loves making things, Bumblebee will feel like a friend. She calls her explosions "slight miscalculations". And if they've ever felt that everyone around them is stronger or faster, they'll get her doubts straight away.

It's worth knowing that the fire comes right at the start. Nobody is seriously hurt, but Bumblebee struggles to breathe when she hears and gets teary later on. A child who worries about something happening at home might find those pages a bit close. There's lots of comfort, though (Katana turns up with ginger tea and extra honey).

What to read next

If this one goes down well, try Batgirl at Super Hero High. Batgirl wasn't born with powers either. She's another tech whizz with a lab full of gadgets, and it's her Bat-Bunker that Bumblebee ends up sharing here.